ABSTRACT
This feminist study explores women’s hostilities toward women in UK leadership as organizational misogyny. Organizations are mostly silent about misogyny, and gender studies have yet to empirically interrogate organizational misogyny and expose it as a critical method of women’s oppression. Here, we explore women’s organizational misogyny (WOM) and its hidden logics. Taking a psychosocial approach and through analysis of 81 women leaders’ accounts, we conceptualize WOM as social-structural-political and affective, operating on patriarchy’s behalf. We theorize UK leadership as fertile ground for women’s internalization of patriarchy and organizational misogyny. WOM is not the fault of individual women. Leadership is unsafe for women leaders, provoking unconscious psychoanalytical strategies; collective social defense, splitting, and projective identification into women, which surface in misogyny toward women. We empirically illustrate and theorize three logics of WOM that exclude and include, control and constrain, and stick and scar. We demonstrate that WOM acts as patriarchy’s “first line of defense,” handcuffing women to its oppression, and propose that WOM paves the way for men’s organizational misogyny. We conclude with future research and practical interventions to battle organizational misogyny and commit to its eradication.